English

A zero-dead-time strontium lattice clock with a stability at $10^{-19}$ level

Atomic Physics 2025-09-19 v1

Abstract

Optical atomic clocks play a crucial role in fundamental physics, relativistic geodesy, and the future redefinition of the SI second. Standard operation relies on cyclic interrogation sequences, which alternate between atomic interrogation and dead time used for state preparation and readout. This approach introduces the Dick effect, where laser frequency noise aliases onto the atomic transition frequency. Although reducing laser noise improves clock stability, the Dick effect remains a key limitation. In this work, we demonstrate a zero-dead-time optical clock based on two interleaved ensembles of cold 87Sr^{87}\text{Sr} atoms. Our system significantly suppresses this noise and achieves a fractional frequency instability at the 101910^{-19} level between 10,000 and 20,000 seconds over repeated measurements, with a best value of 2.9×10192.9 \times 10^{-19} at τ=20,000\tau = 20,000 seconds. The estimated long-term stability based on the combined data of these measurements reaches 2.5×10192.5 \times 10^{-19} at one day. These results represent a more than ninefold improvement over a conventional single-ensemble clock, highlighting its potential for next-generation timekeeping applications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.15100,
  title  = {A zero-dead-time strontium lattice clock with a stability at $10^{-19}$ level},
  author = {Xiao-Yong Liu and Peng Liu and Jie Li and Yu-Chen Zhang and Yuan-Bo Wang and Zhi-Peng Jia and Xiang Zhang and Xian-Qing Zhu and De-Quan Kong and Wen-Lan Song and Guo-Zhen Niu and Yu-Meng Yang and Pei-Jun Feng and Xiang-Pei Liu and Xing-Yang Cui and Ping Xu and Xiao Jiang and Juan Yin and Sheng-Kai Liao and Cheng-Zhi Peng and Han-Ning Dai and Yu-Ao Chen and Jian-Wei Pan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.15100},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 11 figures, including supplemental materials

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:44:13.677Z